Free Chinese MS Office clone for the next 90 days

Jeremy sez, "For the next 100 days, a Chinese company is offering free, legal downloads of a Chinese-made equivalent to Microsoft Office. After the 100 days are over, the Office suite will resume selling at very low prices designed to compete with pirate versions of Microsoft Office rather than the high prices of the legal version." Looks like an interesting, if slightly clunky product. Menus and spell-check are all in Chinese-only, which is probably a deal-breaker for many. Still, this kind of thing is practically guaranteed to send a shiver up some spines in Redmond.

The software is available in versions for both Windows and Linux. According to King Soft, this new release of WPS Office "is an overhaul of 5 million lines of code by 100 engineers over three years", with all the work done in China. The software is available for free for 100 days, after which it will be sold at prices designed not to compete with Microsoft Office, but with pirate versions of Microsoft Office.